Did I say the work was done before? Well, I always tell Scott not to say that things are under control or that everything is working fine aboard because that is the sign for the boat to find something new for us to do. Yes, she hears us and is a real entity!

So this week Scott discovered that the windlass battery under the v-berth had a cracked case and leaked acid on our floor. He added water to all batteries and Scott just could not let the fact that our start battery was very warm to touch go so he got a battery tester and discovered that the start battery had several dead cells. This was 5 ½ years old so I suppose that is within the reasonable life cycle of a boat battery. $126 later we had a new one installed and we appear......nope, not going to say it!

Yesterday we took advantage of friends Sharon and Joe aboard Lucky Lady ll’s offer to let us tag along on their shopping trip to Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart for major provisioning. $350 later we have our larder full as well as our freezer, fridge and liquor cabinet. We should be fine on provisions until we leave the boat in May for our return home. We wanted to do this major shopping while still at the dock since the fridge/freezer will work hard for the next 24 hours cooling everything down and it is easier on energy management to be plugged into the dock.

We are hopeful that the battery replacements of this week will help our energy usage when we leave the dock. We had noticed the past few weeks that our energy usage and solar ability to keep up had been diminished. Our check had shown we were using more amps in a 24 hour period than typical and in fact between 1.7 to 3 more at any time. We have created a theory that the good batteries were shoving amps into the bad ones trying to equalize their charges. We will test this theory when we leave here Tuesday.

Yes, we will leave Tuesday and begin our trip north to Puerto Escondido for Loreto Fest. Spring is here and temps have been to 90 the past 3 days so we need to get away and out where we can jump in the water to cool off in the afternoon when the temperature hits it daily high mark. The water is still cool, about 70-72 but at 90 degrees it feels refreshing.